Tropical Depression

by Laurence Shames

  *****

  Suavely, with exquisite gradualness, Murray was moving his right index finger toward what he remembered as an especially arousing place on Franny's neck, when the phone rang.

  The phone was on a table right next to the sofa, it sounded very loud. Franny twitched as though in answer to a fire alarm, her head sprang off his torso.

  The Bra King muttered, "No one ever calls me," as the instrument rang two times, three times. Irritably, he leaned over and picked it up. He spit out a grouchy hello and got a response that was brief and to the point.

  "Murray? Tommy. My house sank."

  "What?"

  "It sank. They sank it."

  "Who sank it, Tommy, wha?"

  "Murray," said the Indian, who seemed to be shivering. "Not now. I'm wet."

  "Wet?" said the Bra King. Cozy and dry in his penthouse at midnight, he just didn't get it.

  Exasperated now, Tommy said, "Wet, Murray. Those scumbags from the party, they just about drowned me."

  "Hold on a second," Murray said, and he pressed the phone against his stomach. "His houseboat sank," he said to Franny.

  "Oh my God," she said. She was sitting upright on the edge of the sofa, on her somewhat flushed face a look of concern for her new friend, mingled with the ruefully wise expression of a woman who realizes she has narrowly avoided a big mistake. "What'll he do?"

  The Bra King raised the phone to his mouth, asked Tommy that.

  The sovereign hadn't had much time to think about it. But he'd been neglecting his sales of shells; he had very little cash, and neither bank account nor credit. "I'll guess I'll go sleep on the beach for now."

  "That's out of the question," Murray said. "Where are you?"

  "Caroline Street. The pay phone by the grocery store."

  "I'll drive over, bring you some money. You'll go to a motel."

  "You can't do that," said Franny.

  "Hold on," said Murray, and pressed the phone to his belly again. "Can't do what?" he whispered.

  "Send him to a motel. After what he's been through all day and night? You'll bring him here."

  "Here?" said the Bra King, whose glandular optimism in regard to his ex-wife had flickered but hardly gone out.

  Franny simply nodded, the way good people do when they know beyond a shred of moral doubt that they are right.

  Murray winced but brought the phone back to his face. "You'll stay with us awhile."

  Tommy paused. Key West nights were mild but not that mild, his teeth were chattering just slightly. "Jesus, Murray, I don't want—"

  "It's all settled," said the Bra King. "I'm heading over now."

  Tommy paused again, said, "My bike and shells, the cart, it's all I have, can I throw them in your trunk?"

  After they hung up, Murray asked Franny if she wanted to come along for the ride. She said no, she was tired, she was going to bed, and Murray knew she meant in a bedroom of her own.

  He went downstairs and climbed into the scratched-up Lexus.

  The moon was low, the breeze was still, and on the quiet ride crosstown, the Bra King reflected on something Franny had said: that he always wanted a bigger place than he really needed. Well, maybe that had been true when he'd arrived, a lonely refugee with neither friends nor prospects. But now the showplace at the Paradiso was turning out to be just right. A room for him; a room for a former wife who thought it was ridiculous to neck with him; a room for a sovereign but suddenly homeless Indian.

  THREE

  22

  Murray had shopped, but he'd done so like a bachelor, sparsely and forgetfully; and of course he hadn't known that they'd be three—or even, confidently, two—for breakfast.

  So the morning meal was improvised and incomplete. There was coffee but no tea, which Franny now preferred. There was cereal but no eggs, and to Tommy breakfast didn't really seem like breakfast without eggs. There was toast but no jam, fruit but no yogurt. On the other hand, there were plenty of pills. Franny took A's and E's, and calcium for solid bones, and manganese for healthy hair, and deodorized garlic to keep her memory alert. She offered Tommy C's and beta carotene to counteract the stress that he'd been under. On Murray she urged zinc, and to humor her he ate some with his orange juice but took his Prozac also.

  They were sitting at a plastic table—perfect for a rental unit—on the balcony. Unsullied morning sunshine slanted low across the ocean, it lit up just one side of the joggers and walkers and skaters on the promenade. Franny wore a yellow terry robe; her hair was wrapped up in a bright red towel. Tommy was wearing the jeans he'd almost drowned in and a blue tank top borrowed from Murray's dubious assortment of Key West duds.

  "We'll have to get you some clothes," Murray said, around a bite of toast.

  Tommy was chewing granola. He only nodded somberly.

  "Such a shame," said Franny, pulling a section off a tangerine, cleaning it of stringy pith. "How d'you think it happened?"

  Tommy shrugged, glanced under his eyebrows at Murray. "Lotta things go wrong with boats."

  The fib hung in the air like the smell of greasy cooking, made everyone uneasy. After a moment the Bra King said, "There's nothing we can't talk about in front of Franny."

  Maybe Franny was flattered, but mostly she looked baffled. She bit a piece of tangerine, it squirted down her chin.

  Tommy put down his spoon, let it rest against the edge of his bowl. "People boarded," he said. At the thought of the violation, skin moved at the outside corners of his downturned eyes, flesh twitched across his hairline. "With axes, sledges."

  "Jesus Christ," said Murray.

  "Why would anybody—?" Franny said.

  "They smashed the hull," the Indian went softly on. "Cut the dock lines."

  Murray nervously slurped coffee. "The guy you talked to at LaRue's?"

  Tommy pursed his lips and nodded. "Tha'd be my guess."

  "Does someone wanna tell me what the hell is going on?" said Franny.

  For the moment they ignored her.

  "Who was he, Tommy?"

  "Name was Charlie Ponte. Little guy, shadowed eyes, slicked-down hair. Had a bodyguard or something with him, a monster."

  "Oy," the Bra King said. "Mafia?"

  "Murray, I'm an Indian. Fuck I know about the Mafia? Excuse me, Franny."

  "Someone better tell me what this is all about," she said.

  Murray inhaled deep and loud, blew air out past his flubbery lips. "LaRue," he said. "Fucker was setting us up the whole time."

  "I hate to say I told you so," said Tommy.

  "I still don't understand—" said Franny.

  "This Ponte guy," Tommy said. "He's sitting there in LaRue's office, he's telling me, like it or not, he's my partner in the casino."

  Murray looked down at his lap.

  Franny said, "Casino? Casino?!"

  There was a soft breeze from the south, it carried faintly the slap and hiss of wavelets that could now be heard in the mortified silence. Tommy, unaware that he had blundered, blundered on.

  "I tried to tell 'im I already had a partner," he said. "I tried to tell 'im forget about it."

  Franny was glaring at Murray, and Murray was trying to decide if he would crawl under the table or throw himself over the railing to the concrete and the shrubbery three floors down.

  "So what I think happened ...," Tommy rambled, and then he abruptly stopped.

  He stopped because Franny had thrown her tangerine at Murray, was on her feet almost before it bounced off his chest and started rolling warpedly around the table. Her hazel eyes were wide and righteous, naked and unsparing in their morning lack of makeup, and Murray shrank under her gaze, quailed like a timid circus bear being scolded by its trainer. She spit out a sound that was midway between ha! and hm, was illusionless and sharp as the crack of a whip.

  "I should have known!" she said. "Murray the activist. Fat chance!"

  "I never said—"

  "I should have known there was a business angle somewhere."

 
"Franny," whined her former husband, "you've got this all—"

  She talked right over him, her severity leavened somewhat by the towel on her head, which had shifted in the course of her tirade and was tipped now at a rakish angle. "A casino. Cigarette girls. Slot machines. How tacky. How typical."

  "Now Franny, listen—"

  "You should be ashamed," she hissed. "Now I understand, I see it all. First you take advantage of Tommy. God knows what you've got him into. Then you use Tommy to try and take advantage of me." She recoiled and shook like she had a giant bug inside her robe. "Christ, Murray, I'm not saying this would've happened, but it might have happened, I might've actually ended up in bed with you again." She shuddered, made a disgusted sound. "At least I'm spared that."

  She fell silent, crossed her arms against her midriff, realized her pique was not yet spent. "And now you've got the Mafia involved. Terrific."

  "We don't know it's the Mafia," said Murray, though in his heart he did.

  "Sleaze goes to sleaze," said Franny.

  Murray winced, turned to Tommy for respite. "This Ponte person, he say anything else?"

  Tommy picked up his cereal spoon, suspended it between his index fingers. He didn't answer the question right away. Instead, he said to Franny, "I don't think you're being fair."

  Franny tried to straighten the towel, the knot loosened and it was more cockeyed than before. "Fair? He lures me down here with some cockamamie story like he's angling for the Nobel Prize, then it turns out he's exploiting you so he can make a trillion bucks and be a bigshot. That's fair?"

  "He's not exploiting me. And this isn't about money."

  "No, of course not. So what is it about?"

  "It's about," said Tommy, and then he realized he didn't quite know. "It's about... What it's really about is two guys needing something to talk about, something to do. It's about getting to be friends."

  That slowed Franny down. She sat again, absently picked up the tangerine and ate a slice. Less strenuously, she said, "Other people, they're getting to be friends, they go bowling, they rent videos, they find things to do that don't involve the Mafia."

  The Indian shrugged.

  Murray said, "Tommy, please, what else did this guy say?"

  "He said he'd pay me twenty grand a month to be the front man. Sign papers, smile at customers."

  "Twenty grand a month?"

  Tommy nodded.

  The Bra King thought it over, but not for long. "Take it."

  "No way," said Tommy Tarpon.

  "It's a lot of money."

  "We're partners, Murray. I didn't start this thing to end up being someone's flunkey."

  "A quarter mil a year," said Murray. "And nobody gets hurt."

  There was a silence. Breeze rattled palms, there was splashing in the pool, convertibles went by on A-1A.

  Then Franny said, "Hurt?" She said it in a different voice from any she had used so far that morning.

  But now it was Murray whose tone was turning strident. "Yeah: hurt. The Mafia—ya think all they do is whimsical little pranks like sinking people's houses?"

  Franny reached into her bag, pulled out some C's and beta carotene.

  "Gimme a couple a those," said Murray.

  "So now whadda we do?" said Tommy.

  "I tol' ya what ya should do."

  "Forget about it," said the Indian.

  Murray looked off toward the ocean. He suddenly felt very heavy in his plastic chair, he was uncomfortably aware of the weight of his jowls pulling down against his cheekbones. At last he said, "Ah shit."

  No one picked up on the comment, and after a moment, Murray sighed and rambled on, griping to the heavens.

  "I'm tryin' to do the right thing here, I really am. So wha' do I accomplish? I make friends with a guy, right away the Mob is after 'im. I bring Franny down, I try to show her I've really changed, she ends up thinking I'm a dirtbag."

  "I never said you were a dirtbag," said his former wife.

  "Cheeseball then."

  "Cheeseball, maybe." She took the towel off her head. Her hair had mostly dried, it stood up here and there in spiky little curls. "Murray, listen, I'm sorry for what I said. It's just that ..."

  "Just what, Franny?"

  She cast a quick shy look toward Tommy, decided to proceed. "Just that, dammit Murray, I was starting to feel close to you again. I didn't want to hear about money, deals, casinos."

  Murray didn't meet her eye. "I didn't want you to hear about those things either, Franny. I wanted it to be . . ."

  He broke off, blotted his loose mouth on a napkin, let out a slow and quavering sigh, started pushing back his chair. "I'll take you to the airport."

  She sat there in her yellow robe. Breeze tickled her damp scalp, and suddenly she was blindsided by a feeling that seemed to come not from inside her but rather to be carried like the seed of something on the air: She didn't want to leave yet.

  She licked her lips, then spoke softly. "You said you'd take me for a sno-cone."

  Murray fiddled with silverware, for a time he couldn't talk. "Franny," he said finally, "I don't know what's gonna happen here. It could get crazy, dangerous."

  His ex-wife didn't answer and she didn't change her mind.

  The Matalatchee sovereign got up to clear the table.

  "The sno-cone guy," he said. "This time of year he works on Leon Street, over by the school."

  23

  The Spanish guy who'd made the sno-cones fifteen years before was making sno-cones still. He still had the hairy mole on his left cheek, the stubby two-wheeled cart painted lumpy red and lettered with blotched and leaning letters. The only difference was that he no longer dragged the cart behind him rickshaw-style. By now he'd attached the shafts to a motorized tricycle, a cartoonish thing with a pull-start motor the size of a sewing machine.

  The sno-cone man had been diminutive a decade and a half ago, and age had made him even smaller. He worked in baggy blue jeans, a boy's size, not a man's; they were held up by an ancient belt that went around him almost twice, and the legs were rolled into makeshift cuffs above a pair of elfin shoes. His neck had shrunk to a sinewy stalk, his face was pulling inward like a piece of air-dried fruit.

  Strangely, though, his arms had gotten longer.

  When he worked his plane across the scarred surface of the hundred-pound block of ice, the motion seemed to go on and on, his shoulders stretching as though on springs, his elbows extending like they were made of rubber. Six long sweeps was all it took to shave ice enough to overfill a paper cone.

  "So, Meess Lady," he said to Franny now, "you like'a maybe guanabana, coco, papaya?"

  Franny was wearing linen shorts, standing astride her rented bike. It had been a long time since she had a sno-cone, it would probably be a long time before she had another one. She put a thoughtful finger to her chin. "Do you still have guava?"

  "Fo' course I got guava," said the sno-cone man. "What kinda sno-co' man, he no have guava?"

  He stood on tiptoe, grabbed from a shelf a bottle of red syrup. "You like a leetle or a lot, nice lady?"

  From fifteen years before, Franny remembered the sweet and gooey last slurp of a sno-cone, when the stinging ice was gone and nothing remained but a shot of viscous syrup that instantly turned warm. "Pretty much," she said.

  The tiny fellow poured it on; with a courtly nod he handed over the paper cone. Then he turned to Murray. Murray ordered mango. The sno-cones now cost half a buck.

  They took them into the shade of a mahogany tree, put their bikes aside and sat down on a patch of grass. Across the street was a middle school; a few tardy kids were straggling back from lunch. Stylish in their baggy pants and high-top sneakers, they reaffirmed the Lilliputian measure established by the sno-cone man and his tricycle. The smallness made the world seem new and safe and innocent, seemed to speak of young love and discovery and second chances. Murray slid closer to Franny on the grass.

  A huge dark Lincoln, grossly out of scale with everything except
the overarching trees, turned onto Leon Street.

  It advanced with the slow malign momentum of a ship adrift in fog, then parked in back of the sno- cone cart. The driver left the engine running, it sent forth a bad smell and an arrogant whine.

  Franny frowned her disapproval, waved away exhaust fumes. Murray sucked ice and tried to reason away the beginnings of dread as he watched a huge man unfold himself from the car.

  He was wearing a dark blue suit and opaque glasses, and he seemed the largest creature for many miles around. His suit was vast and yet it could barely contain him; a seam stretched open across his billboard of a back, tormented polyester crinkled up between his leg of mutton thighs. He pulled fabric out from between his buttocks and loomed above the sno-cone man; it seemed implausible they belonged to the same species.

  The giant grunted out an order for a sno-cone, grape.

  Franny could see no reason why his engine needed to be running all this time. Before Murray could shush her, she said, "Excuse me, would you mind turning your car off while we're eating?"

  The huge man looked at her with just a hint of unbelieving smirk. He turned away.

  "That's rude," she said. She said it to Murray, but she believed in the power of peer pressure, she said it loud enough for the gargantuan to hear. Murray, feeling slightly queasy now, put a discreet finger to his lips.

  The Spanish guy gave Bruno his sno-cone.

  Bruno took a quick suck of ice. He seemed to notice it was tasty and had another. Then he walked leisurely through the shade toward Franny and Murray.

  Sitting on the ground, the Bra King watched him approach, saw massive tubes of leg, the rude wrinkles of a crotch under the eaves of a hard and bearlike belly. He thought of getting to his feet, seemed not to have the time or will to do so. He sat, telling himself that nothing was wrong, the giant was not the person who'd scuttled Tommy's boat, there was more than one gorilla in town, he would surely veer away.